


To No End Definition

by takadainmate



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: A little kissing, M/M, Post MAG170
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:48:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24575569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/takadainmate/pseuds/takadainmate
Summary: Directly after MAG170, Jon talks and Martin considers the smell.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 3
Kudos: 75





	To No End Definition

**Author's Note:**

> A thank you to Cienna, for betaing, and for always believing me (sort of) when I say, "I really am going to do that writing thing you know."

It was the smell Martin remembered from before. In the office. In the corridors above the Archives. It was something like over-brewed tea and rotting fabric and it clung to everything. Those few times Martin had left the Institute it had followed him. He didn’t think he’d imagined it when people shifted away from him on the tube. When people had shuffled back when he was in the queue at the supermarket. 

It was the smell of forgetting and Martin wondered if Jon could smell it too. He didn’t want to ask.

Around them heavy fog gathered, and it was all Martin could smell, and sometimes it was thick enough that Martin couldn’t make out the walls or the ceiling or even the floor. He couldn’t see Jon.

In those times Jon talked. Martin wanted to hear Jon talk.

“I think we’ve been down this corridor before,” he said, like it was a joke rather than a truth they both knew. 

In the haze of that place Martin saw the shadows of shapes that had once been people. Martin could hear them whispering, or crying, or just breathing. Jon steered them away, down another corridor, past another identical room, past another window looking out into grey fog and despair. 

“Ghosts.” Jon shook his head, grimacing, and Martin knew that if he asked Jon would tell him who the shapes were, and how they had come to be here. He didn’t need to ask though, because Martin knew enough. They were like him. They knew what it was to be on their own and to think that that was the best way to be. That they didn't care that their lives had contracted to the size of a room or a corridor or a skull. 

“I still don’t think I believe in ghosts,” Jon said, and Martin could see him a little more clearly. 

Martin held on to Jon’s hand, warm and alive and real. Around them nothing changed - plain corridors and plain rooms - but Martin’s feet started to hurt, like the back of his shoes was rubbing against the back of his heels. He’d have blisters later. He was tired. It was difficult to remember the last time he’d felt anything like that. It was difficult to remember the last time he’d seen anything other than these corridors and these rooms. That room. That fucking _chair_. 

Like he knew what Martin was thinking Jon said, “I saw the eye.” He laughed without humour. “Well, I always see the eye but, you know what I mean. In the sky. Outside _here_.” He looked back at Martin and his eyes, Martin thought, were his own. There was none of the far-away, creepy stare Jon sometimes got. Just Jon, looking at Martin like there was nothing else worth looking at. “And you weren’t there,” Jon said. “I should have thought. I should have realised.” Jon looked away. Not to the sky. To the walls around them. “This.”

The fog was gathering around them again.

“How long was I… here?” Martin asked.

Jon gripped Martin’s hand more tightly and his lips turned down unhappily and didn’t reply.

Even from this angle, looking mostly at the side of Jon’s face, half shrouded in mist, Martin could see that Jon looked sick, his eyes sunken and bruised, his skin close enough to the colour of the blank greyness of the walls of this prison that Martin worried he’d disappear into it too. 

“A long time, then,” Martin nodded. “I knew it, I think, but I forgot.”

Beside him, Jon frowned. “Time,” he said, “isn’t really a thing anymore.”

Martin thought of the watch he still wore on his wrist. Despite everything they’d been through - fire and the earth and twisted reality - it still ticked. He looked at it. Quarter to three. The second hand crept around the face and Martin wondered if the seconds were slower than he remembered.

Jon was watching him. 

“We still feel it though.” Martin watched and the minute hand ticked closer to the hour. 

“Yeah,” Jon said. Then added, “In some way it must still be there.”

Covering the watch with his sleeve, Martin looked up. He could see Jon clearly now, not as a shadow of a memory or something he needed to relearn, but as solid as the arms around his back and the forehead pressed against his shoulder when Jon found him. 

“Why?” Martin asked.

“The End,” Jon said.

“The End?”

Jon shivered, and Martin couldn’t remember him doing that before. Well, not since everything had changed anyway. When they walked through fire, or passed the living, tortured corpses of what had once been people, flesh peeled and flayed, Martin wondered if Jon felt anything at all. Then he’d turn to him and maybe not so much smile as tilt his head a bit and Martin knew everything he needed to.

“All things come to,” Jon said. 

Martin thought of his sore feet, and the blisters he was getting. “Right. Even here.”

“Even here,” Jon agreed.

That, Martin thought, was kind of the most reassuring thing he’d heard in forever. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.” Jon pulled on Martin’s hand, drawing him close enough their arms brushed together as they walked. The corridor was wider, Martin realised. There was carpet under his feet and bright green paint on the walls.

To die. Martin imagined it. To not feel. To not remember what life had been before, when making enough to pay the rent and Jon not finding out how much Martin fancied him had been the most important things in the universe. That would be a relief. It was a comfort to know that even if they failed in trying to fix the world it wasn’t always going to be like this.

“Don’t,” Jon said, and when Martin looked at him there was _fear_ in the tightness around his eyes and shape of his mouth.

Martin loosened his grip on Jon’s hand. 

“Jon, are you reading my mind again?” he asked.

“I’m.” Jon stopped walking. Looked down at his feet. The carpet was brown, Martin noticed. Like dead grass, or it’d been fitted in the 70’s. “I don’t read minds,” Jon said. “I just.”

“You just?”

Jon shook his head. “I know. I know it’s the same thing. Fine. Yes. I don’t want to lose you again. So I’m.” Jon turned to Martin, ran his hands up Martin’s arms like he was checking he was still there. “Staying close?”

Martin didn’t mean to smile. “Yeah. Okay. That’s what I get for being too slow, right?”

“You _weren’t_ ,” Jon started, cut himself off. Tried again. “I wasn’t _there_. I should have been there. I was just thinking about, you know.” He looked up, then back down at Martin, and Martin understood. He hadn’t done his statement thing. It had been a long time. No wonder Jon looked like shit. 

It was easier to just offer than to think it through, so Martin said, “I can give you a statement.”

From the surprise on Jon’s face Martin guessed he hadn’t seen that coming. 

Despite everything, Martin’s smile was more real than any he remembered in all their time in this new, terrible world. The lightness in his chest was real. The way Jon gripped his arms tightly was real. Even if nothing else was, _they_ were real. Martin leaned forward, kissed Jon. His lips were cold. Surprised him again.

“You-” Jon’s eyes were wide and Martin could see his own reflection in them. 

“My statement,” Martin said. 

They’d be out of here soon. They already were. They might not last. They might last until The End. Martin would hold on to whatever he could get for as long as he could. 

Jon pulled Martin against him, like he had before, but this time he put his hands on Martin’s face and kissed him harder than he ever had before. Lips still cold, but soft and urgent. This, yes, Martin thought. Tried not to think. The smell was gone but there was worse to come. His feet still hurt. He’d just promised to pour out everything that _hurt_. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t done before. But with Jon’s fingers splayed out in his hair, pressed this close, Martin didn’t care.


End file.
